


baby, i'm gonna see the new world with nothing but the love you gave me

by Merrom



Category: Final Fantasy XIII Series
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Fluff, One Shot, Romance, post-LR
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 17:20:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1866072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merrom/pseuds/Merrom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Do you remember the promise you made me?"</i>
</p><p><i>Hope stops at the sudden question, puts down his pen, smiles at his research paper. “Which one?” he asks innocently (</i>but they both know full well what she’s talking about<i>), as he looks up at her.</i></p><p>They consider their next step, after the end of Lightning Returns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	baby, i'm gonna see the new world with nothing but the love you gave me

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to confess to y'all right now that I don't actually ship this pairing, and that I wrote this in like six hours in one sitting and basically went to bed at 6 am that day. UwU Re-post from Tumblr.

"Do you remember the promise you made me?"

Hope stops at the sudden question, puts down his pen, smiles at his research paper. “Which one?” he asks innocently ( _but they both know full well what she’s talking about_ ), as he looks up at her.

Vanille pouts ( _though she isn’t really angry at him_ ). “You  _know_  the one. Back on Gran Pulse.”

"Ah, so it’s the promise I never made, then?" ( _She knows he’s just teasing her, but she crosses her arms anyway._ ) “What about it?” _  
_

She sits herself down in the seat in front of him, folds her hands neatly in her lap. “I was thinking,” she says quietly, and Hope has to strain to listen to her words. “We – we’ve all known each other for so long, but we’ve never really had much time to be ourselves, don’t you think? We were always fighting, trying our best to survive – but now we’re in another world, Hope, and our fighting days are a lifetime away. We’re no longer Pulse l’Cie, enemies of Cocoon – you’re not a Director and I’m not a legend; we’re just Hope and Vanille now, and – “

"Vanille," Hope says gently, cutting across her. ( _She doesn’t mind the interruption; she was fast losing track of her words._ ) He reaches across to grasp her hands in his, and she enjoys the feeling of his fingers stroking hers. “What is it?”

Vanille tilts her head to catch Hope’s gaze.

"I want to see the world, Hope," Vanille says breathlessly, and her eyes are shining emerald ( _and it’s in moments like these that Hope remembers why he fell in love with her in the first place. She’s radiant, like a star glowing brightly in the midst of a sky painted black, and he still can’t quite believe that she’s_  his). “We fought so hard for this, and I – I want to see Europe, I want to see Asia, Hope, let’s travel together. We can get Fang and Lightning and the rest, we can all see this new world we helped to create – “ _  
_

"Hey, slow down," Hope laughs, and leans across the table to kiss her ( _he can tell a lot of things, through that kiss. He knows that she’s wearing strawberry lipgloss, that’s she’s smiling against his lips because she’s just that excited, and that he never wants to kiss another pair of lips again_ ). “We’ve barely settled down here. Let’s try and establish our normal lives here before we go running off into the great unknown.”

But he knows, as well as she does, that there will never be  _normal_  for them, because they’ve all been through too much together. ( _She also knows, without any words being said, that his heart is already set on her idea, but she wants to hear the words from his mouth, so she waits._ )

Hope can think of a thousand reasons why they shouldn’t go:  _work, commitments, routine_ ; and each reason sounds flimsier than the last, because Vanille is really the only reason he needs to do  _anything_.

And at long last,  _finally,_  he says, “When shall we begin?”

( _They don’t know what’s out there, but they’ll be facing it together, and that’s all they really need._ )


End file.
